his knees. His shoulders and the dumbbell in his hand were shaking.
“What's the matter?” I asked. “You should strike, once you've aimed. You would have felt better.”
“I can't forget,” he muttered in a hollow baritone through the sobs. “You see, I can't forget how you used to kill me… twenty — five times!”
I opened the desk, took out my passport, engineering degree, what money there was, and shook him by the shoulder. “Get up! Get dressed and go. Go off somewhere, make a life for yourself, work, live. We won't be able to do anything together. No rest for you or me. It's not my fault! Damn it, can't you understand that I didn't know? I was doing something that had never been done. Surely there were things I couldn't have known. A man can be born a monster or mentally ill, or become that way after an illness or accident, but then it's nobody's fault, nobody to bash with a dumbbell. If you had been in my place, the same thing would have happened, because you are me! Understand?”
He was backing toward the wall, shaking. That sobered me up.
“I'm sorry. Take my papers. I'll manage here somehow. Here,” I said, opening the passport, “you look more like me on the picture than I do. The photographer must have tried to perfect my features, too. Take the money, a suitcase, clothes — and go where you want. You'll live on your own, work a bit, and maybe things will be easier for you.”
Two hours later he was gone. We agreed that he would write to me from wherever he settled. He won't write….
It's a good sign that he tried to kill me. That means he's no slave. He feels hurt and insulted. Maybe things will work out for him?
And I'm sitting here without a thought in my head. I have to start over. Oh, nature, what a bitch you are! How you enjoy laughing at our ideas! You seduce us, and then….
Drop it! Stop looking for someone to blame. Nature has nothing to do with it, it is part of your work only on an elementary level. And the rest is all you. Don't try to get out of it.
The alarm went off: 7:15. Time to get up, shave, wash, and go to work. A murky sun over the buildings, the sky full of smoke, dirty, like an old curtain. The wind raised dust, whipping the trees, blowing through the balcony door. Downstairs a bus licks people off the street at the stops. They gather again, and they all have the same expression on their faces: can't be late for work!
And I have to get to work too. I'll get to the lab, jot down the results of my unsatisfactory experiment, and console myself with the bromides: “You learn from your mistakes;” “There are no beaten paths in science;” and so on. And I'll start the next experiment. And I'll make more mistakes and destroy not guinea pigs, but… people? You conceited, dreaming cretin, armed with the latest technology!
The wind whips the trees. It was all in the past: the days of research and discovery, the evenings of meditation, the nights of dreaming. And here you are, the cold, clear morn, wiser than the night. Merciless morning! It's probably in this sober time that women who had dreamed all night of having a child go for an abortion. And I had an abortion. I dreamed. I wanted to bring happiness to the world, and I've created two miserable people already. I'll never master this work. I'm weak, unneeded, and stupid. I must take up something mediocre, that I can handle — for an article, for a dissertation. And then everything will be fine.
The wind whips the trees. The wind whips the trees….
On the next balcony there's a recording of Mozart's Requiem playing. My neighbor, associate professor Prishchepa, wants to get into a mathematical mood first thing in the morning. “Requi. requiem….” The voices are bidding farewell to someone clearly and simply. This is good music to shoot oneself by. Nobody would notice the shot.
The wind whips the trees.
What have I done? And yet I had doubts, and then not doubts but knowledge. I knew that any change I made stayed with him, that the computer — womb remembered everything. I didn't pay attention. Why?
I had a thought, not expressed in words, so that I wouldn't be ashamed, or a feeling of well — being and safety, I guess: “after all, it's not me. It's not happening to me….” And also a feeling of impunity: “Whatever I want, I'll do. Nothing will happen to me….”
You won't shoot yourself, you animal! You won't do anything to yourself — you'll live to a ripe old age and even set yourself up as an example to others.
The wind whips the trees. The bus licks people off the stops.
I don't want to go to work.
September 20. Gray asphalt. Gray clouds. The motorcycle swallows up miles like noodles. A kid stops by the road, and I can tell from his position that he's decided to be a motorcyclist on a red bike when he grows up. Be a motorcyclist, kid; just don't become a researcher.
I keep accelerating. The speedometer says over ninety. The wind is lashing my face. Here comes a dump truck, hogging most of the road, of course. Those bastard truckdrivers, they don't take bikers for people. Always trying to ride us off the road. Well, I'm not yielding to this one!
No, there was no crash. I'm alive. I'm writing down how I tore around glassy — eyed today. I have to write about something. The truck veered to the right at the last second. I watched in the rear view mirror as the driver pulled over and ran into the road, waving his fists at me.
Actually, if I had crashed, what difference would it make? There's a spare Krivoshein in Moscow. I can't describe my repulsion and disgust for everything right now. Including me.
How he shook, how he hugged my feet — the strong, handsome “not me.” And I could have foreseen it and spared him. I could have! But I thought: “It'll work like this. What the hell! After all, he's not me.”
And it was so interesting, good, beautiful. We dreamed and talked, worried about the good of mankind, swore a vow. What shame! And in the work, I overlooked the fact that I was creating a man. I thought about everything — exquisite forms, intellectual content — but that it might hurt or scare him never entered my mind. I just decided that there was no informational death in the experiment — and fine. But death was a violence that I performed on him over and over.
How did it happen? How?
The white posts along the highway reflect the motor's hum: but — but — but — but how did it happen? But — but — but — but how? The speedometer reads 110, the gray stripes of earth and trees whiz by. At this speed I could escape from pursuers or save someone, getting there in time! But I have no one to run away from and no one to save. I did have someone to save, but I had to do some honest thinking there… and I didn't.
I can master heights, elements, with my brain and brawn. It's easy with the elements. They can be mastered. But how do you master yourself?
I just went over the diary — and I'm frightened by how low and self — serving my thoughts are! Here I am discussing how troubles befall people because they are unprincipled, that they think they can live off to the side, not get involved, and a few pages later I cleverly make sure I'm off to the side: don't get mixed up with Harry Hilobok, let him get his damn doctoral dissertation…. Here I'm thinking about how to derive benefit from my discovery, and here I call myself to do cruel acts with reference to wars and murders in the world. Here I (or me and the double, it doesn't matter) lower myself to the level of an ordinary engineer, who can't handle such difficult work — a moral insurance in case it doesn't work; and when it does work, I compare myself to the gods. And I wrote all this sincerely, without noticing any contradictions.
Without noticing? I didn't want to notice them! It was so pleasant and convenient that way: preen, lie to myself with an open heart, adjust ideas and facts to fit my moral comfort. So it turns out I thought more about myself than about humanity? It turns out that this work, if evaluated not from a scientific but a moral position, was nothing more than showing off? Of course, where would I find the time to worry about my guinea pigs!
What kind of a man are you, Krivoshein?
September 22. I'm not working. I can't work now. Today I rode down to Berdichev for some reason and by the way, I understood the hidden meaning of the mysterious phrase that was printed out one day. Twenty — six kopeks is what it costs to fuel up to get from Berdichev to Dneprovsk: five liters of gas, two hundred grams of oil. I've unearthed another discovery!
Where is Adam now? Where did he go?
And that creature that the machine tried to create after the first double: half — Lena, half — me. It, too, must have suffered the horrors of death when we ordered the computer to dissolve it? And my father. Oh damn! Why am I thinking about that?
